Effect of Corpus-based Approach in Providing Corrective Feedback to EFL Learners’Writing Performance

Corrective feedback is a response to the learners regarding their errors they have made. It implies that learners’ use of the target language is incorrect. An important area that has attracted much attention recently is how students and teachers precisely understand the fruitfulness of corrective feedback in their writing. In other words, how teachers correct students’ writing, is an issue that has attracted enormous interest from researchers and teachers. This study intended to investigate whether the corpus-based approach had any significant role in improving writing proficiency of EFL learners and evaluate the effect of corpora and concordances materials on improving EFL learners’ writing skill. A total number of 80 EFL learners at Shahrekord University were selected to participate in this study, and they were divided in two groups randomly: control group and experimental group. At first, they were asked to fill out the Oxford Placement Test in order to homogenize and categorize them into two levels: intermediate level and advanced level. In control group, traditional approach was used; and in experimental group, a corpus-based approach was conducted. The findings showed that the learners in the experimental group outperformed than those in the control group. Thus, the use of corpora and concordances in giving feedback can help improve writing proficiency of EFL learners. Alsothe findings further proved that female EFL learners were better in terms of the types offeedback they receive.

Keywords:

Corpus-Based Approach , Oxford Placement Test , Writing Proficiency